This videocam easy to keep at fingertips

Point & Shoot Digital Camcorder

Pure Digital Technologies

$130, available at Target

I have a small regret as a parent of a toddler: I don't shoot enough video.

I caught the first steps but not the first time my little guy slid down the staircase in his footie pajamas. I have great footage from his first two birthdays, but not a scene from when he tried to ride a tricycle last month.

I own a nice--and pricey--digital camcorder but it's not something one carries around often. I use it for special events, but when you have children, isn't every day special?

Thanks to a slick, portable and very affordable digital camcorder, catching life's little wonders on video just got easier.

The Point & Shoot Digital Camcorder, which went on sale last week at Target stores for $130, fits in a pocket and holds 30 minutes of video. It looks very much like Apple's iPod, though it is lighter.

The gadget is made by Pure Digital Technologies, which makes one-time-use digital cameras and camcorders sold at mass-market retailers. The difference here is that this camcorder is reusable.

The lens is on the front, and on the back sits a 1.4-inch video screen and simple controls. You push the red button to record a video, and there are buttons for playback and delete. That's about it.

I made my first video five minutes after opening the package. Later, I had a cute video of my son playing the harmonica for the first time (thanks Grandma!) and captured a very thoughtful conversation as he licked a cherry Popsicle.

The camcorder comes with two AA batteries (nice touch), a carrier strap and a pouch. Also included are cords to plug the gadget directly into a TV to watch the videos you make.

Better, this device is ingenious for what it does not include.

There is no media card to hold your videos. Rather, the device stores 30 minutes of video that can be downloaded into a computer and then deleted from the camcorder.

Also, there is no CD-based software to install. Instead, when you plug the camcorder into the computer through the cleverly designed attached USB plug, the device's built-in software loads onto your computer.

The software opens almost instantly after you initially install it on the computer. Setup was simple: I had videos stored on my computer 15 minutes after I first plugged it in.

The software is easy to navigate and allows users to quickly find videos. Each time you shoot a video, it is stored as a separate file you can name. In tests, the camcorder worked well on a Mac and Windows-based laptop.

The quality is surprisingly good. I shot one video outside at dusk. The camera compensated for the low light levels and during playback on the camcorder's screen and on my TV, the video was bright.

There is a downside to this simplicity, of course. While you can zoom in slightly while shooting a video, you cannot do other tricks common with far more expensive digital camcorders, such as extreme zooming, wider-angle shots or exposure setting changes.

Another minor complaint is the sound quality with the built-in microphone. When the subject is too close to the camera, the sound gets muffled and a bit shrill. Likewise, when the subject is too far away, the microphone picks up all the other ambient noise.

The built-in software saves files in the AVI format, good for importing into more robust video editing software. The camcorder's software does not allow for any editing. Pure Digital says you can make a movie of your videos with its software, but that just means your videos are played together consecutively.

It can also compress files into a WMV format to send as e-mails. This makes e-mailing video much easier for the non-technical among us. But there were some issues.

With a Windows computer e-mailing worked well, but on the Mac the software did not create e-mail-friendly files as easily.

I e-mailed a few videos to friends and colleagues, with mixed results. Sent from my desktop Windows computer, recipients reported few problems. But sent from a Mac laptop, the results varied.

For instance, my brother-in-law needed to download additional software to get the video to go along with the audio on his Windows computer. Others couldn't open the files at all.

But these complaints are minor when you consider this simple camcorder does one thing quite well: It's there to get the shot when those little miracles of life suddenly happen.

----------

ebenderoff@tribune.com

chicagotribune.com >> Business

This videocam easy to keep at fingertips